Tips for graduate students preparing their dissertation proposal.

Your dissertation proposal ...

1. Should follow the guidelines of the UofM Graduate School.  See their Web site at http://academics.memphis.edu/gradschool/tdinfo.html .
2. Should be professional bound with cover to facilitate review, such as spiral binding or comb binding.  A copy of the proposal should be generated for each member of the committee.
3. Should include a letter to each committee member thanking him or her for serving on your committee and noting the meeting time and location, if already set.
4. Should include title page, table of contents, abstract and references.
5. Should include all instruments (e.g., consent forms, surveys, tests) and approvals (e.g., IRB, school district) in an appendix.
6. Should follow APA formatting for all references, including in-text citations and reference list. 
7. Should follow APA formatting for all tables and figures.
8. Should be delivered 2 weeks prior to the meeting date.
9. Should include Chapters 1 (introduction), 2 (literature review) and 3 (method).
10. Should be grammatically error free.

The proposal should contain the following sections:

I.          Introduction

     a.         Pervasiveness and statement of the issue/problem

     b.         Purpose of the study

     c.          Significance

     d.         Assumptions, limitation and delimitations (if appropriate)

     e.         Research Questions

     f.          Hypotheses (if appropriate) and Rationales

II.         Literature Review (Sentence outline first for approval)

     a.         Should cover the areas defined by your research questions

     b.         Should be a synthesis and essay, not an annotated list or summary

     c.         Should use advanced organizers and subheadings to guide the reader

     d.         Should point out what’s been done, where the gaps are, and where the conflicts or inconclusive results are

     e.         Should include a method for how the literature review was conducted, including search methods, databases, and keywords.

III.       Method

     a.         Quantitative

          i.          Participants

          ii.         Instrumentation

          iii.        Procedures

          iv.        Analysis (will move to Results section)

     b.         Qualitative

          i.          Design

          ii.         Participants with selection method/criteria

          iii.        Data Collection/Instrumentation

          iv.        Procedures (if not redundant)

          v.         Analysis

          vi.        Methods of rigor and quality

     c.           Alignment matrix will be included throughout this section

IV.          References

V.           Appendix

     a.          All instruments included (i.e., assessment items, surveys, interview protocols, etc.)

     b.          IRB approval (if available)